Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/243

Charles Dickens] men looked grave—grave and rather sad, it seemed to Magda. The woman looked stem, keen, and resolute. In spite of her years, she was evidently still strong, and unusually active. Her eye was quick and bright; her walk, and all her movements, betokened decision and promptitude. She was dressed in black stuff, and her grey hair was put back under a black cap; no speck of white relieved the general mournfulness of her aspect.

Magda tried to smile, and say something gracious to the old woman. She was perfectly respectful in her reply, but as hard as nails; the swift eye was raised, and the tight-shut lips unclosed, just so much as was absolutely necessary, no more; then she pounced upon shawls and cloaks as an eagle might swoop upon his prey, and led Magda up-stairs, without further ado, the two old men following with the valises. The geography of the schloss was less intricate than that of most old buildings. At the top of the stairs ran a long passage, which turned and twisted, it is true, and from which sundry other flights of stairs debouched, to the bewilderment of a stranger who was not closely observant. But at the end of this passage was a door, which the woman unlocked from a bunch of keys hanging at her side; and after this all was simple enough. A short flight of steps led into one of the many towers which Magda had seen from the bridge. This tower—that portion of it, at least, into which Magda was now taken—contained two good-sized rooms, one over the other, a winding stair communicating. The lower room was oak panelled, and in it were an old piano, a harp, a few direfully bad prints of the House of Hapsburg, in the beginning of this century, and one of the Retreat from Moscow. Klopstock's Messiah and an odd volume or two of Lessing were upon one table, together with a very faded work-basket, and an old Spa-box, with the Allée des Soupirs (in which the trees looked like tufts of blue-green feathers upon hairpins), much defaced by time, upon its lid. Upon the other table a cloth, with preparations for supper, was laid. It was the only thing in that strange room, where all seemed to have remained forgotten and untouched for the last twenty years, that spoke a living language—the same, unchanged by fashion, wherein our fathers made ready to eat. A substantial pie, some slices of raw ham, and a carp from the moat stewed in red wine, would, from all time, have seemed an excellent German supper. But Magda felt in no wise disposed to do it justice. She asked to see her bedroom, and the old woman led her up-stairs to the corresponding chamber above, the only difference in the shape of the two being that this latter had a wide oriel window overhanging the moat—an excrescence supported by a corbel, like the "Parson's Window" at Nuremberg.

The room was hung with old Flemish tapestry; a quaint stove of green delf towered up in one corner, a dressing-table and tarnished mirror in another. The bed, which was like a black box with the lid turned back, disclosing a yellow eiderdown quilt, discouraged, rather than invited, the weary to lie down and take their rest. It was raised on a single step, a daïs, and stood at right-angles between the door and window. The back, which I have compared to the lid of the box, was of solid black oak, carved with grotesque figures; there were curtains at the head, and none at the feet; but a board rose up, like the stone at the foot of a grave, with the date "1600" carved thereon. Upon a nail at the head of the bed hung a crown of immortelles, and the name "Louise," fashioned out of the same flowers, after the German manner. The flowers were brown with age, and many of them had dropped; similar chaplets, blown and beaten with the rain and wind, Magda had seen on every headstone in the graveyard where her mother lay.

"Whose name is that? Who was Louise?" she asked of a second old woman, less active than the first, who now appeared, proffering her services as kammerjungfer, while the other left the room.

"It was the gracious young lady," replied the old servant, dropping her voice till it ended in a low sigh. Magda felt more drawn towards her by that touch of feminine softness, less afraid to question her than her falcon-eyed predecessor.

"And when did she die?" continued Magda.

"Twenty-one years ago," whispered the old woman, glancing round. "But, may it please the gracious lady, it is forbidden to speak on the subject."

"Why?" said Magda, grown almost bold by her curiosity, and by her confidence in the kindly wrinkled face before her. "Who forbids you?"

"It is forbidden," she repeated. "The gracious lady does not know " She glanced round once more, and shook her